OF THE PELVIS. 31 



peculiar; in a word, nature seems here to have sacrificed strength 

 and ease of motion to the advantage of pregnancy and parturition. 



(>3. In the male pelvis the coccyx early unites with the point of 

 the sacrum, and the three symphyses frequently anchylose in old 

 age; in women the sacro-coccygeal articulation remains movable 

 even until the period of decrepitude; the sacro-iliac and pubic articu- 

 lations are rarely anchylosed, even at the most advanced age. 



G4. In thin women, and in those ivho are very tall, the pelvis is 

 not so wide, and resembles more nearly that of the male, than in 

 persons of a short and well proportioned stature; which, in the opi- 

 nion of the common people, causes the former to bear children with 

 more difficulty than the latter. 



G5. The pelvis of animals is notably different from that of the 

 human species. If Roussel and some other philosophers had paid 

 attention to this circumstance, they doubtless would not have main- 

 tained that labor requires no aid, because brutes are delivered of their 

 young without needing assistance, and almost without pain. In 

 fact, in most quadrupeds, the pelvis, scarcely curved, in reality pre- 

 sents only one single axis; the sacrum is almost parallel with the 

 spine; the straits are only slightly inclined, and the walls of the pel- 

 vic canal are nearly all of the same length; the coxal bones are so 

 narrow, straight and elongated, that there is, so to speak, no iliac 

 fossa; so that delivery is not exposed, in these species, to the same 

 hazards as in man. 



66. It must not be thought, however, that nature changes thus 

 suddenly, and without gradation, the forms of organs in a series of 

 creatures; in the monkeys, the pelvis, by differing from that of the 

 inferior animals, is found already to approximate somewhat to the 

 character of the human pelvis; it is only by ascending the zoological 

 scale, that we find it gradually becoming more perfect; its various 

 shades may be traced in the ourang-outang, the Bosjesmans, who 

 from their organisation seem to constitute the connecting link be- 

 tween the monkey and man, in the Ethiopian or Negro, and the 

 Malay or Japanese races, before coming up to the Caucasian race, 

 in which it is removed as far as possible from the form observed in 

 the other mammiferse;* whence w,e have a right to presume that 

 parturition is so much the more painful, as the species is more per- 



* On this subject the reader may consult an interesting work by Dr. Wro- 

 lick, who had in Holland an opportunity of comparing the pelvis of the Negro, 

 the Javanese, Bosjesmans, Mustee, and the Hottentot Venus, who was seen by 

 many persons at Paris, and who was a verita!)le Howzouanasse. Le Bulletin 

 des Sciences Medicales for February 1827 contains an extract from this memoir, 

 which is also to be found in the bookstores at Paris. 



